The Road to Hell

Automatonoarachnophobia

15

JUN/11

The posse had returned to Natchitoches to do some trading, and found the place pretty much unchanged – manicured lawns and trimmed hedges all. Chuck met them again, and they got to talking business. He was a bit bemused by the posse’s request for holy water, but promised to send someone to go look for some. As for what the posse had to offer – all he was interested in was the gasoline the posse had gotten from the former residents of Bluebird Hill.

The negotiation got fairly heated at points, annoying the hell out of Samuel Koch when Chuck raised the price of the holy water when he realized how badly the posse wanted it. Negotiations concluded, and the posse was again escorted to a windowless inner room to bed down for the night. Sam wasn’t taking the slight with the holy water lightly though, and snuck out in the middle of the night to try and steal it. And steal it he did…but not before he overheard a very sinister sounding conversation between Chuck and another man, perhaps implying that the townsfolk were going to kill and rob the posse as they were leaving.

Understandably, the posse was very cautious leaving the next morning, but they managed to make it to the edge of town without incident. Once they did however, they heard a serene, androgynous and slightly mechanical voice informing them that they were looters and that they would have to surrender their ill-gotten gains. The posse debated what to do while unslinging weapons…and then dog-sized mechanical spider-like bots with sawblades where mandibles would be started to clamber out of the surrounding area and surround the posse.

Project 32 shot first with a brain blast, and blew one of the bots to smithereens. Moments later, the bots were on them, sawblades whirring and slicing. Project 32 went down quickly, eviscerated by one of the chop-bots. Sam and Jack stuck close to each other, fighting valiantly, while Red started to back up rapidly out of town firing as he went. By the time Sam was cut down, Red was in full-bore retreat. Jack went down soon after, though by then the robots had given up their chase of Red… Hoping the robots had no further interest in eviscerating him, Red crept back into town to check for survivors… 32 and Sam were both dead, but Jack was still breathing so Red hauled him the heck out of there…